Thanks to WBIR-Knoxville for the opportunity to join tonight's 5pm newscast to think through the social impact of the Notre Dame Cathedral fire. Churches are carriers of culture and connective threads to our past. As many around the globe mourn the damage, this moment is a reminder of sacred spaces in our own communities that …

Continue reading Heartbreak and Reminders from the Notre Dame Cathedral Fire

https://soundcloud.com/firstthings/cultural-catholics-conversations-with-mark-bauerlein-32919 Listen to my conversation with Mark Bauerlein on the First Things podcast to learn more about the substantial swath of Americans who think of themselves as "partially Catholic" in some way, though not religiously. I draw upon data from the Pew Research Center and my chapter in the 2018 Annual Review of the Sociology …

Continue reading Talking “Cultural Catholics” on First Things (podcast)

Thanks to the Holy Heretics podcast for inviting me into a wide-ranging conversation about changes in US religion/religiosity and what they mean for modern community, isolation, fragmentation, and more. Listen to the podcast episode here.

The recent tragedy in New Zealand renews questions about the sources of (and solutions for) out-group hatred. Sociologists work to understand how and why people draw boundaries between "us" and "them," and the implications of such boundaries for social interaction. Thanks to WBIR-Knoxville for inviting me to reflect on myriad aspects of social life that …

Continue reading In the wake of hate

My review of Michele Dillon's 2018 book Postsecular Catholicism: Relevance and Renewal was just published in the latest issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (JSSR). Dillon's book considers how religion - and Catholicism in particular - maintains relevance amidst "secularization." She contends that the Catholic Church's postsecular engagement exemplifies the clash …

Continue reading My JSSR review of “Postsecular Catholicism: Relevance and Renewal”